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The Supreme Court hears arguments today over voting rights in Louisiana. The case involves the way the state draws congressional district boundaries, and it concerns the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law against racial discrimination in elections. This is one of the cases in which the Trump administration has changed the federal government's opinion. NPR's Hansi Lo Wang reports.
HANSI LO WANG, BYLINE: In the first week of this Trump administration, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court it had changed its mind. In a lawsuit the court's hearing today, the DOJ no longer takes the position that to get in line with the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana needed to draw another congressional district where Black voters have an opportunity to elect their preferred candidate.
GILDA DANIELS: What we are seeing now is the Department of Justice saying that they're not in the business of enforcing these voting rights, statutes and laws.
WANG: Gilda Daniels is a former Justice Department official who served during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Legal views often change with a new administration. Still, Daniels says in her experience, no matter who's the president, the DOJ seriously deliberates before moving forward with any case.
DANIELS: In the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Voting Section, you don't just wake up one day and say, I'm going to bring a Section 2 Voting Rights Act case. So by the time you get to filing a case, you're pretty sure (laughter) that there has been a violation of one of these voting rights statutes or the Constitution.
WANG: This month, the Justice Department dropped out of another case. This one over voting maps in Texas. Private groups are still suing. NPR reached out to the DOJ for comment but has not heard back.
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NOAH BOKAT-LINDELL: May it please the court, Noah Bokat-Lindell for the United States.
WANG: Justice Department attorneys like Noah Bokat-Lindell are still moving ahead with other voting rights cases like this one. It's over Georgia's redistricting plans, and it was argued before an appeals court in January, three days after President Trump's second inauguration.
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BOKAT-LINDELL: The United States intervened in this case to defend the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as to address the issues of racial causation and private enforcement.
WANG: While the DOJ has changed its position in some cases and so far maintained its position in others, voting rights advocates see another source of uncertainty. For decades, private individuals and groups have brought most of the lawsuits for enforcing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But Republican state officials have been bringing a novel legal argument that the law does not allow private individuals and groups to bring these lawsuits. Advocates fear it's another potential path for weakening one of the key remaining sections of the landmark law.
DAMON HEWITT: What we do is necessary, but it's insufficient.
WANG: For now, civil rights leaders, like Damon Hewitt of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, say their groups are trying to keep doing their part by helping to bring lawsuits to enforce the Voting Rights Act.
HEWITT: We need Congress to do its part, to give us the tools to advocate, to litigate and, frankly, to educate people on what our rights are, what our rights should be.
WANG: Hewitt says one of those tools would be restoring a key part of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court dismantled in 2013. It required certain places with a history of racial discrimination to get preclearance from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing any election rules. The latest bill to restore that part of the law, though, is unlikely to pass in this Republican-controlled Congress.
Hansi Lo Wang, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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